Studies

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, pro­fes­sor of psy­chi­a­try at Boston University School of Medicine, recent­ly dis­cussed the impact of vio­lence on chil­dren, com­par­ing its effects to prob­lems faced by sol­diers return­ing from war. He not­ed, ​“For every sol­dier return­ing from Iraq and Afghanistan with symp­toms of depres­sion or PTSD [post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der], there are around 10 chil­dren in the United States who are trau­ma­tized by expo­sure to fam­i­ly vio­lence, sex­u­al abuse, neglect and assault, with…

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund​’s ​“Death Row USA” shows that the num­ber of peo­ple on the death row in the United States is con­tin­u­ing to slow­ly decline, falling to 3,260 as of April 1, 2010. In 2000, there were 3,682 inmates on death row. Nationally, the racial com­po­si­tion of those on death row is 44% white, 41% black, and 12% Latino/​Latina. California con­tin­ues to have the largest death row pop­u­la­tion (702), fol­lowed by…

DPIC is pleased to announce the launch of its lat­est resource, State Information Pages, pro­vid­ing his­tor­i­cal and cur­rent infor­ma­tion on the death penal­ty for each state. This resource is a work-in-progress, but we are hap­py to present the first 15 state pages. Our orig­i­nal state-by-state data­base is still the best place to look for fre­quent­ly-updat­ed infor­ma­tion such as exe­cu­tion totals and mur­der rates. The new pages are designed as a source of information…

A recent study by Professors Thomas Mowen and Ryan Schroeder of the University of Louisville found that pub­lic sup­port for the death penal­ty has shift­ed away from tra­di­tion­al jus­ti­fi­ca­tions (such as its pur­port­ed deter­rent effect, its imag­ined cost-sav­ing val­ue, and its safe­guard of inno­cent lives), and has been replaced by ratio­nales of ret­ri­bu­tion and clo­sure on behalf of vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. According to the study, which was pub­lished in Western Criminology Review,…

A new study from North Carolina shows that the state’s death penal­ty is error-prone and rarely imple­ment­ed. A study of the death penal­ty from 1977 to 2009 found that two out of three death sen­tences were over­turned on appeal, an error rate of 67%. The study also found that only 20% of death sen­tences result­ed in an exe­cu­tion. The review of the state’s death penal­ty was made by Matthew Robinson, a pro­fes­sor of Government & Justice Studies at Appalachian State University.